Read between these bold and flashing headlines
for the message to my sisters that we belong
standing silent in kitchens with bowed heads and backs,
that our testimony is an annoying fly to be swatted.

I’m shredding that message.

I am woman, no longer a bone from your body. God made me whole.
Cite me your old laws of how I am lesser, unclean, but I
am busy watching the Lord pick an adulteress off the ground and I
hear him telling a bleeding woman that her faith made her well.
Tell me all about my weakness but I
stand by the Lord who stopped everything to raise a dead son
for a weeping mother whose agony touched his soul.
He loved our complete selves, from tears to faith.

They killed Christ for his rebellion. You are still doing it.

Let the women speak. Listen to the wounded lives
struggling unseen in tearing bramble.
Hold up the girls, mothers, sisters, and grandmothers. It is time
for us to unlock our souls.

Call me heretic. I am watching the Lord lift a girl from her deathbed
and say she was only sleeping.

“Again he said, ‘What shall we say the kingdom of God is like […]? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.” – Mark 4:31-32

“Beneath the flames”

Despair is the flames parading over our
streets with crackling fanfare
and only silence to answer it

An old woman is watching this with
red, weary eyes. She holds a golden locket
with a seed.

Confusion is the hammer madly pounding.
Denial is the darkness past the flame,
where it is getting hard to see.

An old woman on the sidewalk takes the seed
from the locket and gives the locket to a boy
at her knee. It fills his hands with gold.

Terror is the dryness in the air
and the wind that carries the spectacle
Pain is the thousand, thousand hands ready
with water but no leader for the brigade.

An old woman kneels in an overgrown lot
and plants the seed into the earth. It is small
like the boy with the locket.

Love is the seeds deeper than fire
and smaller than notice.
Hope is planting mustard beside a boy
with a golden reminder.

To my country America, consider whose “Word” we are listening to right now. Consider what it sounds like—and what it ought to sound like instead.

“Whose will be done?”
You have heard it said I am a God of love and mercy,
but I say to you, rip the babies from their mothers
and bring them to me for proper salvation.
Truly I say to you, follow the law blindly and take no responsibility.
Blessed are the ones who live with closed hearts, and
Blessed are they who misuse my name for fear and power,
for theirs will be a snow-white country.
Love the Lord your God when it is convenient,
and do unto others as you see fit.
And your mortal kingdom come, your will be done,
in America as it is in darkness.
Amen.

Hello everyone – after a lull in activity, I am trying to get back to posting every 2 weeks, on the weekends. Keep an eye out for new poems!

And now, for this week:

This poem is written in support of the March for Life. May God bless the marchers’ courage and open the ears of all people in this discussion so that we may listen to each other and act to protect our country’s children.

Let us hold our hands high above turmoil
like waving autumn treetops in a storm.
We will weave our colors together into new understanding
of love that beats as deeply as giant drums of change
in the mountains we must climb.
Hand in hand, we will share faith and hope for what waits
at the top where our people, our nation,
dance like stars beneath an open sky.

With God’s grace and strength, we do not have to be frozen in fear, hurt, and anger for ourselves and our brothers and sisters. Let us take action in our broken world.

God bless

“Rooms”

Fire is blowing and here
I am knowing I must move.
Before me there is a house
where crimson chews on the walls
until they fall in, their gaping wounds glowing
in a furnace of war.

I must move.

the fire has been set—it can’t be rewound
like an old VHS. This film only rolls forward.
But while the drama unfolds,
I am caught staring. So many windows cracking,
so many rooms burning, so many cries rising.
The answer is rescue, but I cannot choose a room.
There are too many, this is too much.

I must move.

Will I say years from now that my master was
indecision and my chains were indifference?
Apathy floods these onlookers
like poison gas. I could breathe it
in and float, aimless, in my own mind as darkness
takes us, as I wonder: which room?

I move.

I will pick one room, you pick another, and you
still another. We will pull hope out
of the flames.

I am shaken by the events of the past week in America, but I remain encouraged by the many people to whom I’ve spoken who are ready now more than ever to fight for unity and justice in this country. I still choose to believe that we as a people can seek wholeness. We do not have to let the dark and divisive rhetoric of this year be the norm. Instead, let us strive to heal through communication, love, and open hearts.

God bless

“Lilac Nation”For unity

Young one, how fear has grated
your branches into brittle fingers curling
inward, terrified to embrace the wind of todays and
tomorrows. Your leaves are meant
to shade and shelter, your red, white, and blue flowers
to surprise the earth with fruitful promise. Yet in storm’s
wake I see your proud colors crying out
in red pain and blue smoke,
as your trunk parts
down the center, flowerless.

Young one, let your leaves return.
Soak in wind and water and courage, and
let your branches bloom anew with all
your colors as one:
a vibrant, lilac nation.